98.8 KISS FM Berlin
Encyclopedia
98.8 KISS FM is a privately owned radio station broadcasting to Berlin
and parts of Brandenburg
on 98.8 FM
MHz specialising in R&B, dance
, hip hop
and pop
. It also broadcasts via analogue cable in Berlin
and Brandenburg
on 97.90 MHz and nationwide via DAB
. Its studios are part of the medienzentrum Berlin located in the shopping center Das Schloss in the district of Steglitz
. Gross revenue of Kiss FM amounted to €6.7m in 2003.
and STAR FM. In the target group most important to advertisers, people aged 14-49, KISS FM is fifth place with 40,000 listeners. In total, KISS FM reaches 59,000 listeners per hour in Berlin and Brandenburg..
Its most important competitors are JAM FM, another black music station with a Rhythmic CHR format, Fritz, the public radio station for youths in Berlin and Brandenburg, and ENERGY Berlin which is part of NRJ
, a Pan-European chain of youth-oriented radio stations.
in January 1993. It was named after the New York radio station 98.7 Kiss FM which was one of the first stations to play rap music regularly, catering only to an African-American audience. The vision of the Berlin adaptation was to play "underrepresented music". The broadcasting license for KISS FM was tied to certain requirements which are still in force today. KISS FM must air a program with music and spoken word which focuses on all fields of young life in Berlin, especially vocational training, work, leisure time and youth-related problems. Furthermore, the program must be socially engaged, react to current trends and put an emphasis on the integration of minorities living in Berlin.
In its beginning, KISS FM was broadcast solely via analogue cable on 98,45 MHz making it hard for the station to reach a significant number of listeners. On 1 August 1994, the cable frequency was switched to today's 97,90 MHz. In the same month, Kiss FM was considering to discontinue its broadcasts due to financial issues and appealed to the regional media authority MABB to assign an FM frequency to the station. After a decision by the MABB in December 1994, Kiss FM received the frequency 98.8 from BFBS on 28 February 1995.
In its first five years, KISS FM regarded itself as a DJ radio and a representative for Berlin's club scene. Its slogan at that time was "Power Music Radio". The daytime programming was formatted, offering a mix of R&B, hip hop and dance music. Typical artists heard on the station included Freundeskreis, Apollo 440, Run DMC, Janet Jackson, Robert Miles or Nas. In the nighttime, DJ shows were aired focusing on all kinds of urban & dance music genres. Among its DJs were Paul Van Dyk
, Ray Cokes
and DJ Tomekk. KISS FM also participated in the Love Parade
and the Christopher Street Day
in Berlin with its own truck.
Shortly after the commissioning of the new frequency, a quarrel flared up between the majority shareholder Frank Otto and founder Costoula Dornbach who held 24.8% of the shares. Frank Otto had to sell some of his shares due to media concentration regulations in order to become a co-partner in a news-talk radio venture. He installed a new managing director in March 1995 replacing the founder with the aim of turning KISS FM into a CHR format and thus making his shares more attractive to prospect buyers. After hefty protests by the staff, the managing director Norbert Schmidt quit his job and the threatened DJ shows were left untouched. Andreas Clausen, a former presenter and managing director from OK Radio in Hamburg, became then the new person in charge.
In 1996, KISS FM was shown for the first time in the radio audience study Media Analyse with an average of 20,000 listeners per hour, 80% of them living in West Berlin. Faced with financial shortages, KISS FM couldn't offer any major promotions with cash prizes to its listeners. Instead the station had to come up with innovative and inexpensive ideas. For instance, the morning show hosts revealed the "money hits" during a 104.6 RTL promotion and told their listeners when to call in at the competing station with the right answer.
In the meantime, founder Costoula Dornbach was squeezed out of the co-partnership with the aid of an expulsion proceeding which was approved by the court. The French radio station Europe 1
became a new shareholder and bought out the other co-partner Nikolaos Chrissidis who held 25% of the shares. These changes of the shareholder structure also meant a transition from a DJ station covering niche genres to a formatted radio station catering to a young, urban audience.
Although the personnel was able to avert this trend at first, the formatting was completed in the fall of 1998, beginning with the new period of the radio audience study. The musical focus was now solely on the ever more popular R&B and hip-hop, while electronic music was banned from the program completely. Most of the DJ shows were cancelled at this point, with the exception of "Boogie Down Berlin" with DJ Tomekk whose appearances on-air phased out around 1999, when he came to national fame with his hit single 1, 2, 3 Rhymes Galore. What was left from the DJ shows were two hours each weekday and five hours on the weekend with more or less generic DJ sets which were repeated many times, lacking the personality and the eclectic selection of the earlier DJ shows.
To set itself apart from other radio stations in Berlin, the new morning show tried to deliver the most outrageous contests. The best examples for this might be "Extreme Microwaving", where listeners microwaved objects like auto batteries or dead mice, or the search for "the best tits in Berlin" with a very explicit description of the breasts on-air. After receiving various rebukes by the media authority of Berlin-Brandenburg, and because of the fact that the renewal of the broadcasting license was due in 2007, one could observe that future promotions on the station became far less scandalous. Despite the slight changes, the media authority decided in 2007 to renew the licence for only two years instead of the usual seven years due to the doubtful programming development. One year earlier, in 2006, Kiss FM moved to the medienzentrum Berlin in the shopping centre Das Schloss, together with the radio stations Berliner Rundfunk 91,4 and 94,3 rs2.
Since the fall of 2008, dance music was brought back to the station, and now accounts for a significant amount of the music played, while hip-hop music was drastically cut down. Artists that are being played on the station include Lady Gaga
, Rihanna
, Taio Cruz
, David Guetta
, and one-hit wonders like Stromae
, Yolanda Be Cool
, or Edward Maya
. This development was accompanied by a new sound design and new hosts like BJ Barry, and female rappers She-Raw and Visa Vie.
Especially the "BJ Barry Show", which aired in the drive time
from 2008 to 2010, stood out from the rest of the program, because of the creative freedom the host received. Contrary to the usual practice to use the drive time show as a promotion vehicle for the morning show, the "BJ Barry Show" mainly consisted of live listener calls, studio guests, and contests. Major promotions during the audience survey didn't cause any outrage anymore, shifting the focus from scandalous contests to sweepstakes related to the music being played on the station, like "Track Discoverer". Also, while still being the exception, editorial contributions in the morning show increased, showing a drastic change in content. Examples are school tours, reports on youth centres in Berlin, or a special show reminding of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. In the meantime, the licence for Kiss FM was extended until 2016.
In 2011, Frank Otto bought all shares (49.8%) from minority owner Europe 1 making his company the sole shareholder of Kiss FM. Beginning on August 1, 2011, Kiss FM started airing nationwide via the new digital radio standard DAB+.
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and parts of Brandenburg
Brandenburg
Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam...
on 98.8 FM
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
MHz specialising in R&B, dance
Dance-pop
Dance-pop is dance-oriented pop music that originated in the early 1980s. Developing from post-disco, it is generally up-tempo music intended for clubs with the intention of being danceable or merely dancey...
, hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
. It also broadcasts via analogue cable in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Brandenburg
Brandenburg
Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam...
on 97.90 MHz and nationwide via DAB
Digital audio broadcasting
Digital Audio Broadcasting is a digital radio technology for broadcasting radio stations, used in several countries, particularly in Europe. As of 2006, approximately 1,000 stations worldwide broadcast in the DAB format....
. Its studios are part of the medienzentrum Berlin located in the shopping center Das Schloss in the district of Steglitz
Steglitz
Steglitz is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in the south-west of Berlin, the capital of Germany. The locality also includes the neighbourhood of Südende.-History:...
. Gross revenue of Kiss FM amounted to €6.7m in 2003.
Audience reach and competitors
KISS FM has a technical reach of 4.2 million listeners living in Berlin and Brandenburg. Its core target group are young people living in Berlin between the ages of 14 and 29 years. Within this target group, KISS FM is third place with 24,000 listeners per hour, behind 104.6 RTL104.6 RTL
104.6 RTL is a German radio channel. First aired on 9 September 1991, it serves Berlin and aims at the 14-39 age bracket. The studios are located at the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin-Charlottenburg.-Program:...
and STAR FM. In the target group most important to advertisers, people aged 14-49, KISS FM is fifth place with 40,000 listeners. In total, KISS FM reaches 59,000 listeners per hour in Berlin and Brandenburg..
Its most important competitors are JAM FM, another black music station with a Rhythmic CHR format, Fritz, the public radio station for youths in Berlin and Brandenburg, and ENERGY Berlin which is part of NRJ
NRJ Radio
NRJ French multimedia group based in Paris. Since its foundation in 1981 as a French pop music radio station it has grown and evolved to become the NRJ Group...
, a Pan-European chain of youth-oriented radio stations.
History
KISS FM started its broadcasts from Voltastraße in the locality of WeddingWedding (Berlin)
Wedding is a locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany and was a separate borough in the north-western inner city until it was fused with Tiergarten and Mitte in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform...
in January 1993. It was named after the New York radio station 98.7 Kiss FM which was one of the first stations to play rap music regularly, catering only to an African-American audience. The vision of the Berlin adaptation was to play "underrepresented music". The broadcasting license for KISS FM was tied to certain requirements which are still in force today. KISS FM must air a program with music and spoken word which focuses on all fields of young life in Berlin, especially vocational training, work, leisure time and youth-related problems. Furthermore, the program must be socially engaged, react to current trends and put an emphasis on the integration of minorities living in Berlin.
In its beginning, KISS FM was broadcast solely via analogue cable on 98,45 MHz making it hard for the station to reach a significant number of listeners. On 1 August 1994, the cable frequency was switched to today's 97,90 MHz. In the same month, Kiss FM was considering to discontinue its broadcasts due to financial issues and appealed to the regional media authority MABB to assign an FM frequency to the station. After a decision by the MABB in December 1994, Kiss FM received the frequency 98.8 from BFBS on 28 February 1995.
In its first five years, KISS FM regarded itself as a DJ radio and a representative for Berlin's club scene. Its slogan at that time was "Power Music Radio". The daytime programming was formatted, offering a mix of R&B, hip hop and dance music. Typical artists heard on the station included Freundeskreis, Apollo 440, Run DMC, Janet Jackson, Robert Miles or Nas. In the nighttime, DJ shows were aired focusing on all kinds of urban & dance music genres. Among its DJs were Paul Van Dyk
Paul van Dyk
Matthias Paul, better known by his stage name Paul van Dyk is a German Grammy Award-winning Electronic Dance Music DJ, musician and record producer...
, Ray Cokes
Ray Cokes
Ray Cokes is an English television presenter. His father was an officer in the Royal Navy, who was stationed at various navy bases around the world. At age 15 they permanently relocated back to the UK...
and DJ Tomekk. KISS FM also participated in the Love Parade
Love Parade
The Love Parade was a popular electronic dance music festival and parade that originated in 1989 in West Berlin, Germany. It was held in Germany annually between 1989 and 2003 in Berlin, and then from 2006 to 2010 in the Ruhr region...
and the Christopher Street Day
Christopher Street Day
Christopher Street Day is an annual European LGBT celebration and demonstration held in various cities across Europe for the rights of LGBT people, and against discrimination and exclusion. Only Germany and Switzerland use the term CSD, in other countries, the same kind of event is called Gay...
in Berlin with its own truck.
Shortly after the commissioning of the new frequency, a quarrel flared up between the majority shareholder Frank Otto and founder Costoula Dornbach who held 24.8% of the shares. Frank Otto had to sell some of his shares due to media concentration regulations in order to become a co-partner in a news-talk radio venture. He installed a new managing director in March 1995 replacing the founder with the aim of turning KISS FM into a CHR format and thus making his shares more attractive to prospect buyers. After hefty protests by the staff, the managing director Norbert Schmidt quit his job and the threatened DJ shows were left untouched. Andreas Clausen, a former presenter and managing director from OK Radio in Hamburg, became then the new person in charge.
In 1996, KISS FM was shown for the first time in the radio audience study Media Analyse with an average of 20,000 listeners per hour, 80% of them living in West Berlin. Faced with financial shortages, KISS FM couldn't offer any major promotions with cash prizes to its listeners. Instead the station had to come up with innovative and inexpensive ideas. For instance, the morning show hosts revealed the "money hits" during a 104.6 RTL promotion and told their listeners when to call in at the competing station with the right answer.
In the meantime, founder Costoula Dornbach was squeezed out of the co-partnership with the aid of an expulsion proceeding which was approved by the court. The French radio station Europe 1
Europe 1
Europe 1, formerly known as Europe n° 1, is a privately owned radio network created in 1955. It is one of the leading French radio broadcasters and heard throughout France...
became a new shareholder and bought out the other co-partner Nikolaos Chrissidis who held 25% of the shares. These changes of the shareholder structure also meant a transition from a DJ station covering niche genres to a formatted radio station catering to a young, urban audience.
Although the personnel was able to avert this trend at first, the formatting was completed in the fall of 1998, beginning with the new period of the radio audience study. The musical focus was now solely on the ever more popular R&B and hip-hop, while electronic music was banned from the program completely. Most of the DJ shows were cancelled at this point, with the exception of "Boogie Down Berlin" with DJ Tomekk whose appearances on-air phased out around 1999, when he came to national fame with his hit single 1, 2, 3 Rhymes Galore. What was left from the DJ shows were two hours each weekday and five hours on the weekend with more or less generic DJ sets which were repeated many times, lacking the personality and the eclectic selection of the earlier DJ shows.
To set itself apart from other radio stations in Berlin, the new morning show tried to deliver the most outrageous contests. The best examples for this might be "Extreme Microwaving", where listeners microwaved objects like auto batteries or dead mice, or the search for "the best tits in Berlin" with a very explicit description of the breasts on-air. After receiving various rebukes by the media authority of Berlin-Brandenburg, and because of the fact that the renewal of the broadcasting license was due in 2007, one could observe that future promotions on the station became far less scandalous. Despite the slight changes, the media authority decided in 2007 to renew the licence for only two years instead of the usual seven years due to the doubtful programming development. One year earlier, in 2006, Kiss FM moved to the medienzentrum Berlin in the shopping centre Das Schloss, together with the radio stations Berliner Rundfunk 91,4 and 94,3 rs2.
Since the fall of 2008, dance music was brought back to the station, and now accounts for a significant amount of the music played, while hip-hop music was drastically cut down. Artists that are being played on the station include Lady Gaga
Lady GaGa
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta , better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to...
, Rihanna
Rihanna
Robyn Rihanna Fenty , better known as simply Rihanna, is a Barbadian recording artist. Born in Saint Michael, Barbados, Rihanna moved to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue a recording career under the guidance of record producer Evan Rogers...
, Taio Cruz
Taio Cruz
Taio Cruz is a British singer-songwriter, record producer, occasional rapper, and entrepreneur. In 2008, he released his debut album Departure, which Cruz wrote, arranged and produced himself. It achieved initial success in the UK and earned him a MOBO Award nomination...
, David Guetta
David Guetta
Pierre David Guetta , known professionally as David Guetta , is a French house music producer and DJ. Originally a DJ at nightclubs during the 1980s and 1990s, he co-founded Gum Productions and released his first album, Just a Little More Love, in 2002. Later, he released Guetta Blaster and Pop Life...
, and one-hit wonders like Stromae
Stromae
Paul Van Haver, better known as Stromae [stromaj] is a singer-songwriter of Belgian-Rwandan origin. He has distinguished himself in both hip hop and electronic music...
, Yolanda Be Cool
Yolanda Be Cool
Yolanda Be Cool is an Australian band made up of Sylvester Martinez and Johnson "Durango Slim" Peterson. They collaborated with Australian producer DCUP to release an international single "We No Speak Americano" on the indie Australian label Sweat It Out they founded, sampling on a 1956...
, or Edward Maya
Edward Maya
Eduard Marian Ilie , better known as Edward Maya, is a Romanian musician, producer, performer, and composer...
. This development was accompanied by a new sound design and new hosts like BJ Barry, and female rappers She-Raw and Visa Vie.
Especially the "BJ Barry Show", which aired in the drive time
Drive time
Drive time is the daypart analog to prime time for radio broadcasting. It consists of the morning hours when listeners wake up, get ready, and/or head to work or school, and the afternoon hours when they are heading home and before their evening meal. These are the periods where the number of...
from 2008 to 2010, stood out from the rest of the program, because of the creative freedom the host received. Contrary to the usual practice to use the drive time show as a promotion vehicle for the morning show, the "BJ Barry Show" mainly consisted of live listener calls, studio guests, and contests. Major promotions during the audience survey didn't cause any outrage anymore, shifting the focus from scandalous contests to sweepstakes related to the music being played on the station, like "Track Discoverer". Also, while still being the exception, editorial contributions in the morning show increased, showing a drastic change in content. Examples are school tours, reports on youth centres in Berlin, or a special show reminding of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. In the meantime, the licence for Kiss FM was extended until 2016.
In 2011, Frank Otto bought all shares (49.8%) from minority owner Europe 1 making his company the sole shareholder of Kiss FM. Beginning on August 1, 2011, Kiss FM started airing nationwide via the new digital radio standard DAB+.